Tuesday, June 30, 2009

10 random things...

1. I used to wear a braid in my hair like Lee Marvin's character Tully Crow from The Comancheros. Yes, my role models sucked. So did my fashion sense. But I also have always had a thing for braids.

2. The first animal I got to name after a movie/book character was a black koi. I named him Ramius. We had a koi pond, and the whole family got to pick out our koi from the big koi farm and name them. Ramius was a beautiful fish, the only black koi we had in a school of yellow, orange, red, and white. My dad was in charge of naming our cats growing up, so there were never any movie names in there. Almost every one of my animals since has been named after a movie or book character. I really loved that koi.

3. The first celebrity death I was aware of was Stephen Boyd's. It was also the first death to make me realize people weren't going to be around forever, that they could die young. It was my first look at mortality, and I've never forgotten how I felt that day when my mom told me and showed me his obituary in the newspaper.

4. I hated/feared swimming growing up. To get me to jump into a neighbor's pool one day, my parents told me I couldn't watch Journey to the Center of the Earth on TV that night. I'd have to go to my room while the rest of the family watched it. Yeah, I finally jumped. After much crying. And no, I still don't particularly like swimming, though I'm not afraid of it and can dive and swim underwater and all the rest when required.

5. The only movie I ever almost walked out of the theater on was the remake of Cape Fear. I found it completely repulsive, and it cemented my dislike for Martin Scorsese. (I do like the original.)

6. Most amazing scenes from a classic movie that have to be seen on the big screen to truly be appreciated: chariot race from Ben-Hur and the raising of the obelisk from The Ten Commandments. When my dad and I went and saw the latter in the theater, when we came out, that's all both of us could talk about, how awesome the raising the obelisk scene was, a scene we'd never really paid that much attention to on television.

7. There are some movies I won't ever watch because I love the score too much and don't want to know what's happening to the music. I don't want images not my own in my head for those scores. The Blue Max, Masada, and The Missing are among the films on this list.

8. There's only one song I can think of that I can actually quote all the lyrics to if asked, without hearing the music. That's the theme to You Only Live Twice... or so it seems. Even having listened to the Beatles and Dean Martin and Bobby Darin and my favorite '40s songs hundreds of times, I still don't know the words. Lyrics are the least important part of a song to me.

9. The movies that gave me the most nightmares was the Alien/Aliens combo, movies I love very very much, but those darned facehuggers would hunt me in my dreams. Rarely the full grown aliens, though them too occasionally, but the parasite incarnation... yeah.

10. I learned to play Chopin's Nocturne in D-flat Major and part of Shumann's Carnaval Opus 9 just because Dana Andrews "played" them in two of his movies.

6 comments:

My fashion sense sucks too, and probably my role models too. I still do my hair in three braids (and the rest loose) like Madmartigan (Val Kilmer) in Willow. And I used to do one lone braid like a Padawan apprentice, and put the rest in a ponytail.

Rachel -- yeah, I can totally see you doing Madmartigan with your long hair! LOL! I was doing Herger's braids from 13th Warrior for awhile, and I came *this* close to actually leaving longer braids when I got my hair cut this last time so I could really do it right, but I chickened out at the last moment.

And I was thinking last night that maybe they weren't such bad role models, after all. I mean, when you're shy and quiet, why not aspire to Lee Marvin's swaggering screen confidence? Even if he does play bad guys half the time?

............

Ginger -- yep, the Shumann is from Night Song, the Chopin is from Elephant Walk. I particularly love playing the latter, even if I never ever will be able to play Chopin correctly. But I just can't make one hand play one rhythm while the other hand plays another. Ain't happening in this lifetime.

Ginger - Nope, never seen "A Song to Remember," but I'd like to, one of these days.

I love "Night Song," but really, I love it because Hoagy Carmichael (and Ethel Barrymore) steals the movie right out from under Dana. He's the one that grounds it if you start to think too hard about the implausibilities of the plot. I'd really liked Hoagy before, but this was the movie that made me fall completely in love with him. Not that Dana isn't wonderful, because he is (and I can watch him sit at a piano all day), it's just that his character is (understandably) bitter and cranky, and that lets Hoagy's character shine instead. Besides, Hoagy gets all the funny dialogue and the great reaction shots. Hee.